Framingham Parents Must Protect the Schools from the Mayor's Scheming

The Mayor's latest 'MOA scheme' is a deception to enable high density housing in Nobscot and flood the schools with 400-600 new students.

SUMMARY

(1) The Mayor continues in his implacable drive to force high density residential development on the Nobscot community, flooding the schools with 400-600 new students in the next few years, gifting $30 million in profits to his favorite developer, J&Company, but causing a net loss to the city of at least $2-3 million/year and likely triggering large, costly capital projects, including a 10^th elementary school and substantial capacity expansions to the middle schools and high school.

(2) The Mayor’s latest claim is that a special Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the developer will lower the flow of students from a high density Nobscot development, but the MOA tries to do that by restricting the number of bedrooms in residential units, in complete contradiction to the state MBTA Communities Law. The MOA is a Mayoral sleight of hand designed specifically to help tamp down community opposition and to prevent just one more City Councilor joining the ranks of the 5 who currently oppose high density development at Nobscot.

(3) Unless the community acts now to counter this latest Mayoral ploy, a huge development will come online in Nobscot in the near future and submerge the school system and the city’s finances.

(4) The Nobscot development should be done under the standard permitting process of the city, not governed by state MBTA Communities Law zoning. Then the flow of new students into the Framingham Public Schools can then be controlled and the development turned into a profit center for the city.

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Despite all the community opposition, substantial high density development is still on the table for the village of Nobscot. The battle started more than a year ago with the developer, J&Company, trying to get Nobscot zoning changed to specifically favor their plans for a large residential development completely out of scale with a rural village. At the time, Councilor Adam Steiner made the case against that:

Guest Column By Framingham City Councilor Adam Steiner on Nobscot Development (8/22/23)

The major thrust of the argument then was that the overwhelming scale of such a development was completely incompatible with the character of the neighborhood and would drown Nobscot in new traffic.

What has become apparent since then is that this is not just a local Nobscot issue, as the impact of such a monster development, with more than 600 residential units, would flood the schools with 400-600 new students in a few years, cost the city millions in additional annual operating budget funds for the schools, and likely trigger the need for a 10^th elementary school and substantial expansions of both middle and high school classroom space, with associated large capital investments. See:

High Density Nobscot Development Will Damage the Framingham Schools (11/24/24)

Framingham Mayor Doubles Down On High Density Nobscot Development (11/15/24)

The Mayor has deliberately distorted the process for compliance with the state MBTA Communities Law to maximize the chances that Nobscot will end up with an out of scale high density residential development which specially favors one developer: J&Company.

No one can explain the Mayor’s behavior.

Especially egregious is his latest maneuver, which promotes a special agreement with the developer, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), which is designed to defuse parent opposition by claiming that high density development can be constrained to produce only a small number of additional students for the school system. Nothing could be more deceptive.

We will get to the details of that shortly, but here is a brief history of the Mayor’s maneuvers:

1. The whole MBTA Communities Law compliance process was started late, after the last election cycle, when preliminary discussion was initiated in the Planning Board on March 13, 2024. In other communities, the process was started more than a year earlier, and thus supported a much better collaboration between planners, elected officials and the community. In Newton, when it became clear to the community that some City Councilors favored housing density that was too high, voters removed 6 incumbents from office in the November 2023 election. In Hopkinton, Town Meeting rejected an earlier version of their plan in May 2024 by a vote of 126-118, but approved a better solution by a vote of 236-167 in November. It takes time to get to a good solution and it needs a strong vote of approval.

2. Having purposely started the process late, the Mayor confined the process to the Planning Board, with no City Council engagement. He also managed the process, so that all the way through to September, Nobscot was nowhere to be seen in the set of parcels up for possible rezoning to comply with the MBTA Communities Law. He started the process late and ran out most of the clock before ambushing the Nobscot community in September with his high density scheme for their village. Remember that the deadline for submission of compliance plans to the state is December 31, 2024.

3. The Mayor overrode the Planning Board recommendation to the City Council. When Nobscot community pushback convinced the Planning Board to drop the Nobscot density from 30 units/acre to 15 units/acre in its recommendation to the City Council, the Mayor pushed the density back up to 20 units/acre in an unauthorized ‘adjustment’ for City Council consideration.

4. In a last ditch effort to save his high density vision for Nobscot, the Mayor promoted a false narrative that Nobscot could be rezoned with developer specific modifications to lower the number of children in the proposed development. The Mayor was confronted with continued Nobscot community opposition, which had grown to at least 1,000 residents. He also had to deal with the obvious fact that rezoning the Nobscot parcel to comply with the MBTA Communities Law could allow 620 3BR units to be constructed there, flooding the schools with at least 400 and possibly up to 600 new students. So, the Mayor’s next move was to promote a Memorandum of Agreement with the J&Company developer to restrict unit bedroom count, in complete contradiction to the state MBTA Communities Law.

Here are the 5 iterations of planning for Nobscot so far:

1. Iteration 1: August 22, 2024 – zero units

2. Iteration 2: September 19, 2024 – 1,104 units @ 30 units/acre (Planning Board’s first pass)

3. Iteration 3: September 24, 2024 – 552 units @ 15 units/acre (submitted to the City Council)

4. Iteration 4: November 14, 2024 – 620 units @ 20 units/acre (Mayor’s ‘adjustment’)

5. Iteration 5: November 25, 2024 – 620 units @ 20 units/acre with an MOA ‘attached’ to the parcel to trick people into believing this is state compliant and will mitigate the flood of students into the Framingham Public Schools. (Mayor’s current gambit)

Now let’s focus on this latest Mayoral MOA maneuver.

The proposed Memorandum of Agreement may be found here:

https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/3004508/J_Roelofs_2024-11-22_Draft_MOA_Terms_MBTA-Nobscot.pdf

Amongst other things it places restrictions on bedroom count per unit. Here is a quote from the MOA:

“At least 85% of units in apartment or condo buildings (buildings with > 6 units) to consist of 1-2 bedrooms;”

The MBTA Communities Law is very specific in placing no such restrictions on developments.

If the 31 acre Nobscot development density remains as proposed at 20 units/acre, under the state law, 620 3BR units could be built. Anything which is more restrictive will not pass review by the state.

That means the MOA cannot be applied to Nobscot if it is included in the MBTA Communities law compliance package.

Here are the MBTA Communities Law guidelines which buttress the above arguments:

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/section-3a-guidelines

which specifically state:

“7. Determining Suitability for Families with Children

Section 3A states that a compliant multi-family zoning district must allow multi-family housing as of right, and that “such multi-family housing shall be without age restrictions and shall be suitable for families with children.” EOHLC will deem a multi-family zoning district to comply with these requirements as long as the zoning does not require multi-family uses to include units with age restrictions, and does not limit or restrict the size of the units, cap the number of bedrooms, the size of bedrooms, or the number of occupants, or impose a minimum age of occupants. Limits, if any, on the size of units or number of bedrooms established by state law or regulation are not relevant to Section 3A or to determinations of compliance made pursuant to these guidelines.”

In the end, the situation is crystal clear.

The MOA should be removed from the discussions by the Planning Board and the City Council.

The City Council should then make sure that Nobscot is removed from the MBTA Communities Law compliance package, so that the contentious parcel can go through the normal permitting process.

Then local zoning adjustments can be made to ensure that a really sound development occurs, creating new housing at Nobscot in a manner acceptable to the really active and engaged local community.

Most importantly, the flow of new students into the Framingham Public Schools can thus be controlled and the Nobscot development turned into a profit center for the city.

Then we will have both peace and progress in Framingham.